If anybody needs me, I’ll be huddled in the corner, sobbing and burbling, "Ten years! Ten lousy years!"

Comments

1. job says

   August 28, 2009 at 10:18 am

   Matthew,

   I thought the second graf was even more autocardial-mawfilling.

   "In other transacational New Yorker news: Charles Stanley Ledbetter, the New Yorker's receptionist who was kicked out of his job after Conde Nast fired 13 remaining editorial receptionists earlier this month, will be taking a job in the magazine's fiction department."

   It almost sounds like the precis for one of their cartoons…

   Dontcha see? You coulda got a good job (doing anything in the fiction dept.) just by being fired from a shit job (edit. receptionist). One man's sideways promotion is another's upward promotion, no?

   My condolences.

   JOB

   Reply
2. EdL says

   August 28, 2009 at 7:34 pm

   But, if you had been employed by the New Yorker all these years, perhaps you would not have written "Swimming with Scapulars."

   We would have missed out.

   Reply
3. cubeland mystic says

   August 28, 2009 at 8:01 pm

   I am sorry to hear it. My boss is one of the best people I've ever worked with. He's got all the skills including a bubbling super outgoing genuine personality. I have a another real good acquaintance who is kind of, I hate to say, it useless. He's another empty suit who mostly reads the latest management dreck, and works facebook, linked in, who's who, goes to conferences etc. He's a professional Teflon suit wearing, amoral, pussy, dreck-regurgitator. Guess which one just earned a senior management position at a major global household name corporation? It really bums me out that my boss has not been promoted. He's a rare human being.

   Life's crazy that way. November, someday you're ship's going to come in. I just hope it's not the Pequod.

   Reply
4. Ellyn says

   August 28, 2009 at 11:28 pm

   Ouch.
   (Don't you find that having a large family puts a crimp in the huddling and sobbing? I know mine is really holding me back…)

   Reply
5. Darwin says

   September 1, 2009 at 4:45 am

   Having our Caesar-at-the-foot-of-Alexander's-statue moment, are we?

   The cure, is, of course, arrogance. Announce to anyone who will listen that the New Yorkers hasn't been the same since Tina Brown took it over and destroyed it, and then observe darkly that they might as well put a 26-year-old in charge, because there's nothing to do but read back issues from the days when Mr. Shawn was editing.

   This, of course, will better your career nor reduce her accomplishment not at all, but it will make you insufferable enough to all and sundry that they'll forget to compare your accomplishments to Ms. Lester's in their hurry to find gentler climes to inhabit.

   Reply
6. Matthew Lickona says

   September 1, 2009 at 8:46 am

   Darwin,
   More like Caesar's sandal-scrubber, watching from his place just behind the elephants as Caesar goes to the foot of Alexander's statue. But point taken. I could probably be more arrogant than I already am – I'll work on it.
   Ellyn,
   The trick, sort of the opposite of praying without ceasing, is to indulge the self-pity even in the midst of doing right by your family, thereby making doing right by your family fuel for even more self-pity: this, this is why I'm not managing editor at the New Yorker…
   CM,
   My ship was the Lusitania, I fear.
   EdL,
   You're too kind.
   JOB,
   "New Yorker Magazine; how may I disconnect you?"

   Reply